Mathers closed his eyes and summoned a long-suffering look. “I told her not to tell no one, ’cause then people would start asking did I see Bigfoot in a flying saucer with Elvis. But Kendra she just can’t keep her damn mouth shut no more than she can keep her legs together. I don’t know why I still hang with that bitch. There are some mega-hot pumps out there who got an eye for me. I got choices. Plenty of options. I don’t know why I don’t kick Kendra’s ass out of here.”

David said, “Maybe it’s love.”

Mathers laughed and opened his eyes and shook his head. “You’re one crazy dude. You should like record yourself, listen to yourself sometime. You’d be amazed, all the shit you talk.”

His laugh was like that of a snarky, arrogant adolescent.

He plucked the revolver off the table, aimed well over David’s head, and squeezed the trigger, launching pulverized beetle far into the vista of scrubland.

He pointed the weapon at David. “You got five hundred more in your wallet, college boy?”

Having had some experience of a genuine homicidal sociopath during his many conversations with Ronny Jessup in that conference room at Folsom, David did not react as Mathers wanted. “Why? Do you have more story to tell?”

“What’s five hundred to you, anyway? I’m damn sure you don’t live in a shitcan trailer.”

“You’re right about that.”

“We’re in a lonely place, college boy. That Porsche will bring a nice price from a chop shop. And there wouldn’t be no headstone to say Here lies David Thorne.”

“You’d have to dig the grave. Hard work. The lovely Kendra can’t do the job all by herself.”

Most of his life, Richard Mathers had used a low-flashpoint temper to intimidate people, and maybe he hadn’t been accustomed to pushback until he’d taken a beating at the hands of Patrick Corley or Corley’s ghost or whoever/whatever was waiting for him that day in his trailer. If his attitude had once been highly effective, he had lost some of his mojo after being beaten.

“You dissing my lady?” Mathers asked, leaning forward in his chair, resorting again to that Spaghetti Western tough-guy squint.

“No, not her,” David said, and rose to his feet. “After you got the shit kicked out of you, I guess you never went back to the house on Rock Point Lane.”

“Maybe I did. I got a big curiosity.”

Ignoring the revolver, David met Mathers’s stare and finally said, “No, you didn’t. And I don’t pay for bullshit.”

He walked away. He was sure that Mathers had never returned to that house. He was also certain the man had withheld something from him, something related to the spellbound girl in the armchair, but whatever secret he kept, no amount of money would loosen his tongue.